Day 5
Day 5 was a weird but fun day. We decided to launch from Hickam Harbor, something easy to make up for the hard paddle from the weekend before. Stan sponsored me to get on Hickam AFB, which was pretty damn cool. I haven't been on that base in a long time. It was nice to see the area again, there were few changes but all good ones. At the launch area, we met up with Mike, Donovan and (gdamnit I forgot his name) a friend of Stan's.5/30/09
After another long gear up, we were in the water by 8am. It was much later than our usual 6am launch, but no complaints from anyone. Stan went tandem with his buddy while me, Mike and Donovan, who was borrowing Stan's Prowler, went solo on our yaks. It was another nice morning, although we did see some sets starting to build out on the reefs to the left and right of the channel markers. The plan was to hit outside of the channel to about 50'-150' of water. Aside from the shuttle boat taking surfers to and from the reef breaks, there was little boat traffic. I gotta mention that those damn shuttle boats driven by the lifeguards didn't follow the no wake rules inside the harbor. It made for some tippy paddling when they went by.
The tandem and Donovan were out of the channel first and hooked up to some fish almost immediately. Me and Mike followed shortly after. While passing the last channel marker, Mike hooked up to something but lost it a few minutes later. I had dropped down some damashi after seeing a small school on the FF. I pulled up a few Moano, 1 keeper and 2 released to grow up. I noticed Stan was hooked up to something and also watched Donovan pull up a pretty big Moano along with a couple little ones.
I stuck around the 30-50ft area and bottomfished with the damashi. Got a few hits here and there but no keepers. At around 10am the conditions started to get mushy and the wind started to pick up. The chop grew to about 3ft and the swells hitting the reef were almost double from what they were just a couple hours earlier.
I then got the call over the radio. Donovan got hit sideways by some chop and huli'd over. Stan was on something big so I was asked to help out. I looked about 100yds over and saw the red prowler and started to paddle over. I was moving against the chop and the current so it took me longer to get there than I had liked. Once there I saw Donovan holding on the one side the yak with one leg halfway on. I told him to relax as he already looked exhausted from trying to re board. It was important to make sure he was calm before starting off with the next few steps. Now we had to clear his deck. One of the rods had fallen over parallel to his deck and damashi hooks were all over. He couldn't reach so I maneuvered around and cut the lines out of the way. Once the deck was clear, I tried to get into a T position to provide the most stable position for the both of us. The now stronger wind, chop and current wasn't making it easy. Once finally getting it the best I could, Donovan got back on with some coaching and situated himself. Although this was only his second time out with us, I'm glad this didn't disuade him from being excited about kayak fishing. I went around and gathered the gear that had fallen off but was still floating. I think he had just lost his tackle bag and got his cell phone wet. Also, I had my video camera running the whole time. Although it was running, my main objective was his safety and not taking video. Most of the video doesn't have him on film, but the audio captured most of it.
We all paddled back through the channel and fished a little bit inside the harbor with little luck. The wind picked up even more and everyone decided to call it a day.
So. Day 5 score
0
0
And one Moano kept.
***I will add the video soon. I'm still editing it.***
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